


Lessons

by bananatri



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: (he's right), Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Gen, I'm wrung out creatively, Kitamoto is so nice, Madara is...best cat?, Mental Disorders, Natori is a mess and needs help, Natsume Takashi Protection Squad, Natsume Takashi's Terrible Childhood, Nishimura struggles, Shibata is guilt personified, Shigeru is best dad, Tanuma wants to help Natsume, Tooru is a sweetheart and needs more chapters, Touko is best mom, and secretly fierce, but Kitamoto is also really perceptive, everyone in Natsume's life right now is nice, he doesn't realize he already is by being himself, he doesn't really know how, he just really likes Natsume, he'd fight people for Natsume, in the manga I mean, inspired by Shibata getting Tanuma and Natsume burgers cause he thinks they're too skinny, it's also a little sweet, it's also the most depressing, not here, or best friend, so that's how this fic ends, someone give him chocolate and love and a therapy cat, sorrynotsorry, the last chapter is Natsume's POV, what a sweet kid, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-04-23 02:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 10,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19141540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bananatri/pseuds/bananatri
Summary: Things the people around Natsume Takashi learn about him and themselves.





	1. On love and apologies

**Author's Note:**

> So this is the first fanfic I've ever written in my life so that's fun. If you see things that need fixing or have suggestions or anything, please comment (and go gentle on my fragile heart). But anyway, this one's just going to be a series of little thoughts from the various people in Natsume's life which I will update as inspiration strikes.

Touko’s love had always been fierce, but she was discovering that her love was often something with teeth. It was never like that before, but she’d never been a mother before. Never so clearly understood what her love could mean to someone. Never had to protect someone so fiercely because everyone she’d known, all the people she’d loved up until now, had learned how to fight for themselves as they’d grown, had learned it was okay to fight for themselves, and up until now she didn’t realize that was a thing you had to learn.

But perhaps that wasn’t something you learned, fighting for yourself seemed like a natural instinct after all, but it was obvious enough to her now that you could learn that it wasn’t okay to fight for yourself. Takashi never seemed to fight anything _but_ himself, would come home with unexplained hollowness and miles of nothing in his eyes and smile and apologize for the trouble, for ripped and dirtied clothes, for coming back later than they presumed he would. Up until now, Touko hadn’t realized that you could apologize for being hurt and expect no one to care about anything but the inconvenience. 

Whenever she responded that all of that was okay so long as he was okay, that all of it was inconsequential compared to his wellbeing, he always looked at her like he couldn’t understand what she was saying. Like he couldn’t reconcile her words with the world as he knew it. But far from learning to understand this, he learned to tack on an extra apology: one for worrying them, an apology he hadn’t included at first out of the belief that no one would.

He still hadn’t learned how not to apologize, that it was okay not to. He seemed to only have learned the wrong lessons in life, lessons she didn’t know you could learn. He learned how to be quiet and polite and afraid and ashamed of the space he took and how to make that space as small as possible. Those hints of disbelief he had at being worried about or included that would peek out from his glass eyes made her love curl up in her chest and bare its fangs. She didn’t know what she would do anymore if she saw any one of the people he used to stay with. She knew that they couldn’t all have contributed to his view on life, not directly anyway, but everyone had contributed to it in some way, or at least no one had fixed it (had they even tried?), which amounted to the same thing in the end.

She remembered meeting him for the first time and asking him if he wanted to come live with them and Takashi looking at her like no one had ever asked him that before. Like she was something out of a dream. Like she was something out of a fever dream, because he wouldn’t dare hope for it even in his normal dreams.

(Sometimes, when she saw him come to breakfast with bruises under his eyes and that fake smile of his, she wondered if he dreamed or if everything was nightmares.)

(She wondered if they were still nightmares if they were memories because nightmares weren’t supposed to be real when you woke up.)

But of course Takashi would think no one wanted him when up until now no one had, passing him around like a used toy, a little more cracked with every hand that held it.

Touko was constantly warring between never wanting to see any of those relatives for the rest of her life (never wanting Takashi to see them again for the rest of his) and wanting to track down every single one of them and force an apology from their lips. Wanting to sit them down and tell them that whatever they think they’d lost while living with him was nothing as valuable as a child. Takashi’s multi-paged medical chart and bloodied lips that opened around apologies for lost buttons spoke volumes about how many things he thought were more valuable than his life, how many things he’d been _taught_ were more valuable.

Touko’s love had grown to be something with teeth and she found that she quite liked it that way. Takashi was like a little bird with a broken wing - too afraid of heavy hands but too helpless to do anything but brace for hurt and hope it wouldn’t come. He needed to be treated softly and gently, but it was clear that the love he needed had to be fierce. He couldn’t understand something he’d never known unless she poured every bit of her love into every action she made, every smile she gave him, firm and unshakable and giving no quarter.

Her love had become that of a mother’s: a wolf’s teeth razor sharp to those that would do her cub harm and gentle only to the child held safely in them.


	2. On anger and smiles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Shigeru chapter

Shigeru had grown into someone slow to anger, but he was rediscovering the part of him he thought he’d left behind in his youth that reared its head to any perceived slight, though now it reared its head to far more than _perceived_ slights. 

It took Shigeru two weeks, far too long a time, to figure out that Takashi’s smile was fake. He’d perfected the art of smiling politely and kindly so well that Shigeru hadn’t realized his smile said nothing at all. The only reason he had realized had nothing to do with the curve of his lips, but from finally making eye contact for enough seconds to realize his eyes were as expressive as a doll’s. The blank quality of them only added to the ethereal air he wore like a cloak, moonbeam hair and mint eyes and a smoothness to the way his limbs moved that made him seem more nature than man. Shigeru wondered if that’s how those around him had justified how they treated him. If they had felt something ethereal and devastating in him they felt only from tsunamis and meteor showers and told themselves he shouldn’t be treated the way a human should. 

His anger flared when he remembered how they got him, the one time he saw something other than a placid smile on Takashi’s face, the previous family eagerly passing him off, showing no concern for the fragile boy in the hospital, so unsure in his welcome that he’d cried between broken pleas to let him into their home. He remembered how others had spoken of him, how most of them started their stories with “that Natsume child” and ended with disgust dripping from every syllable. Shigeru couldn’t understand how they could live with the kind boy so desperate for love and see nothing but a stray cat that clawed at their furniture and stole their food. But what angered him the most was how they called him “Natsume”, how they could live with a child and call themselves his guardians, call themselves the closest to family he could get, and still only refer to him by his last name, reminding him how much of an unwanted outsider he was every time they called out to him.

Shigeru wondered if that was how Takashi had learned to smile the way he did, polite and unassuming and distant and sure that that was the only version of himself people could tolerate seeing, a smile tragic on someone decades older and jarring in all its wrongness on a child. 

He had to reign in his fury and bury it deep inside him every time he saw him smile like that because he knew Takashi had learned to protect himself by reading every little change in people’s faces and voices. He had accumulated so much hurt that he wouldn’t be able to understand the anger wasn’t directed at him, that people could be angry _for_ him. Takashi seemed much older like that, saying things people wanted to hear and keeping them at an arm’s length and perceptive and mature in a way that was born from a lifetime of struggle. But for those same reasons he seemed like a very young child, unsure in anything but his unwelcome and utterly lost in the ways of expressing himself and interacting with others beyond uninterested affability. 

Between the two of them, Touko was the fierce and outspoken one, and Shigeru knew he’d have to be the one to hold her back if they met any of their relatives, but the anger that unfurled itself when thinking of them told Shigeru he’d probably end up joining her. Shigeru thought that may be good for Takashi; he’d seen a lifetime of anger and while it would be ideal if he didn’t see any more, Shigeru at least wanted to show him an anger that was for him, that was because of him not for any wrong he thought he’d done but for the wrongs others had done to him. If he saw it, Shigeru wondered if Takashi might begin to understand that people _had_ done him wrong, if he could learn to acknowledge he was worth more than what he’d been led to believe.

Shigeru wondered if that would be enough to turn Takashi’s smile a little more real, a little more sure that there was space and time carved out specifically for him.


	3. On familiarity and names

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Nyanko sensei chapter (or the Madara chapter cause sometimes I feel like the two names carry two different personalities and Madara would be the more fitting one here)

Every now and then Madara wondered to himself why all the ayakashi called Natsume Reiko, “Reiko”, and Natsume Takashi, “Natsume”. A last name was more distant but Natsume was, by all rights, closer to the ayakashi than Reiko was. Reiko was an intriguing amusement, someone Madara would remember for her oddity and grace. Natsume was someone Madara would remember for many reasons, most of which he refused to name or think about, but he could at least admit to himself in the privacy of his mind that Natsume meant more to him than Reiko did.

But Natsume was still Natsume and Reiko was still Reiko. 

There were a great many ayakashi that revered Natsume and more that regarded him as something of a friend, drawn to his double-edged gentleness and ephemeral air only humans possessed. 

Reiko and Natsume were similar in that regard; they drew gazes like moths to a flame. They were feared and admired and powerful. Neither of them budged an inch when they made up their mind and had no qualms sending certain ayakashi flying, and yet they were impossibly kind, for all that Reiko buried it under walls of cynicism and Natsume wore it on his sleeve: a thread anyone could pull so long as they could see it. 

They both understood humans and ayakashi as much as they didn’t understand them and understood ayakashi better than they did their own kind. They had cultivated mistrust and fear and anger from those from both worlds and molded it into their beings. For Reiko, that meant she was difficult to know because of the layers of thorns she cocooned herself in. For Natsume, that meant he was difficult to know because he hid behind politeness so thick it was easy to think there was nothing more to him.

The biggest difference between the two was their gentleness. Where Reiko swung bats and insults, Natsume reached out his hand again and again, no matter how many times he was hurt, no matter how many times Madara chased away those who betrayed his trust. 

This tendency of Natsume’s caused Madara no small amount of irritation, but he could admit that there was a quiet sort of bravery there: to be willing extend a hand no matter what, and from that he had the friends and family and love Reiko saw very little of in her life and trusted in even less. Madara didn’t know if that meant Natsume was courageous or foolish or where that line was drawn. 

In that way Natsume’s life was both easier and harder than Reiko’s. He’d found people he loved that loved him in turn and had learned the joy and terror of it. He constantly feared for those he cared for and struggled maintaining the balance between the two worlds far more than Reiko did, for he had one foot in both of them where Reiko stood in neither. 

Reiko filled her book with names she would never call, never see more than once. Natsume saw as many partings as she did, brief moments that left behind nothing but memories, but he maintained ties where she couldn’t. He opened his heart and got closer to more ayakashi and humans than she ever did. Reiko didn’t know how to be anything but distant. 

But all the same, Natsume was Natsume and Reiko was Reiko. 

Madara saw many ayakashi call him by the name of a memory and hold him by the name they shared even when they learned they’d said the wrong one - pressed into him the name written on the book and the importance of a family he didn’t know or remember. Natsume saw Reiko through the eyes of the ayakashi, memories bleeding from paper and ink and searing themselves into his mind. He knew more about her than he did his parents and Madara wondered if Natsume hated that or loved it: seeing the life of a lonely woman without seeing the life of a family, but at least seeing more than a photograph. Madara wondered if Natsume even thought about it. He seemed equal parts pleased and sad with every new page of memories, seeing all the similarities besides their name, and all the differences besides how they were called.

In the end, Reiko was Reiko and Natsume was Natsume and Madara would carry their names inside him long after the book turned to dust.


	4. On loneliness and rope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one...kind of got away from me. I had intended for parts of it to be a reflection on the Days Eater episode (the original name for this chapter was On loneliness and cupcakes) but Tooru had her own ideas and didn't let me get much of a word in. Characters are fun. Especially when they're someone else's. Anyway, here is the Taki Tooru chapter. *drumroll*

Sometimes Tooru would look at Natsume and see things she couldn’t begin to understand.

He would look at the world with glass eyes that saw more than anyone else. Not just Yokai, but something in the way the wind meandered, the creek bubbled, the flowers breathed. She would look at him and see someone as much nature as man and would wonder which he felt he was.

Tooru remembered seeing the rope burns around his neck after he’d come back from seeing the monster that dogged her steps even as he quietly reassured her that everything was alright, that he’d _make_ it alright, as though the terror of his encounter was just another inconsequential part of his day. Tooru remembered thinking that he must have been subjected to horrors of Yokai beyond anything she’d even imagined for him to act the way he did.

Natsume would flinch from Yokai, from terrifying nightmares that would gladly do him harm, but he wouldn’t flinch from humans. Any sudden shout or hand shooting towards him had him going still and quiet, head bowed and eyes closed, bracing himself for the inevitable hurt. When she saw him like that, quiet and sure that he was unwanted by the people around him, still unable to trust in human warmth but desperately, _desperately_ wanting to, she wondered whether it was humans or Yokai that had done him the most harm.

Sometimes Tooru would look at Natsume and see things she understood only all too well.

When someone approached him while he was off-guard, whether they were a classmate or teacher or friend, the briefest moment of surprise and hesitation would flash through his eyes – too fast for anyone but Tooru to pick up on. She could easily pick it out because she recognized it in herself – the surprise at being included, the hesitation at deciding what to say, if they could say anything at all. She occasionally caught herself doing as Natsume did – hanging on the fringes of a group, not sure if she could step in or how to step in but wanting to. The miracle now was that they _could_ step in, that someone else would pull them in if they wouldn’t do it themselves.

The before – the time of not being able to step in – Tooru thought that that was what loneliness was: being able to see everything you’re missing and not being able to do a thing about it. Tooru had been irrevocably changed by her year of loneliness; she could still feel the faint shadows of it in her dreams and smiles and voice, and sometimes she would have to stop and reassure herself that it was alright – that she could be a part of the world without having to apologize or fear for it.

Tooru had suffered through a year of loneliness and she would look at Natsume and wonder just _how_ he had suffered through a lifetime of it and keep reaching out despite it. His smile was pale, spiderwebbing filigree on fragile porcelain, needing a purposeful sort of care, but there all the same. Tooru wanted to trace the loneliness in his life, find what it was that made him the way he was and brought him here – wanted to pull it out and sweep it away and reassure him that he could leave it all behind.

Tooru had the advantage of remembering what it was like to have friends and how to make them, and she found herself slipping more and more easily back into that life the longer she could go without needing to check over her shoulder.

But Natsume didn’t seem like he had that. He didn’t seem like he’d ever really known how to make friends, how to keep friends.

So Tooru decided to grasp Natsume’s hand and promised herself she wouldn’t let go – she’d pull him along with her as she stepped further and further into the world they’d been forced to the outskirts of.

Sometimes Tooru would look at Natsume and see things she didn’t understand in his smile, in his eyes, in his very breath. But with every step he took with her, every passing day his smile grew a little sturdier, she found herself at peace with the fact that she may never understand. Tooru couldn’t hold onto the old Natsume, couldn’t find him and give him all the love he had needed, but it was alright now. She could be here for the person he was finally getting the chance to be.


	5. On shame and food

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Shibata chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was fun to write mostly because I think Shibata is a very interesting character. He's the only one that's come back and shown proper remorse. He's odd to write, especially his inner thoughts, because it's clear that he does feel guilt, but it's equally clear he has no idea how to show it or what to do about it. He's kind of like Natori in that sense: sparkly, popular, and willing and able to be fake and charm his way through any social situation because of it. Because of that though, he doesn't really know how to talk about things that are real or difficult, and there's nothing more difficult than Natsume.
> 
> He's one of my favorite characters, if you can't tell.
> 
> Happy reading!

Every meeting with Natsume was a lesson on pain. On Natsume’s pain and the pain Katsumi felt as he remembered who he used to be before, who Natsume used to be before.

He remembered little Natsume, even smaller and skinnier and more fragile than he was now and far less fierce (he wasn’t all that fierce now either, just a little more short-tempered and able to speak up when it was for things he felt deeply about), his eyes always cast down, doing his best to ignore the words that were thrown at him. Katsumi remembered thinking it was funny, the strange silver-haired, green-eyed transfer student trying his best not to cry.

Now, his stomach twisted and turned, and he hated himself every time he thought about that time, which was almost always now, because after being swept up in the ridiculousness of Natsume’s life, he couldn’t pass by anything, no matter how mundane, without being reminded of Natsume in some way. He didn’t think it was healthy to ruminate on the past as much as he did, but he didn’t know what to _do_ with all the guilt that came too late and rewarded him with interest for all those years he didn’t think anything of the person he used to be, guilt compounded on guilt compounded on shame.

Back then, Natsume was quiet aside from when he was afraid, would jump and yell, would try his best to convince everyone else that he saw something and that that something was real. Over time he got quieter and quieter, until he would jump without yelling and never defended himself no matter what people would say to him. He would come in every day thinner and more despondent than the one before it.

Katsumi knew that the children and the teachers were unkind to him, but thinking back on Natsume now, he realized the people he stayed with must have been unkind as well. Of course, they couldn’t have all been outright neglectful (maybe even worse) to him, but none of them could really be classified as kind, seeing as how they threw him away after only a few months of cohabitation.

(You couldn’t really call it living together with how much Natsume had looked like he wasn’t living at all.)

And thin, thin Natsume, as scared of human touch as he was of the unseen monsters, how must have he been treated to act like that, to look like that? How many hands had reached towards him with malice, how many people remembered to properly feed and clothe him, how many people loved him (did anyone love him?), how many chances had Natsume given to the people around him and getting nothing in return? He didn’t like thinking about those things, but he couldn’t help it from time to time, and, while he didn’t know what the answer was, he knew he didn’t want to know it. He didn’t think he’d be able to handle that on top of everything else. Because Natsume, all skin and bones and avoiding every razor-sharp word thrown at him without shedding a single tear even at only ten years of age, must have lived a life of sorrow and agony.

Every time he thought of the Natsume then, he would get caught up on how thin he had been, the way he looked at food like it might disappear if he wasn’t quick enough, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to have it. So Katsumi would try to assuage his guilt by plying Natsume with food every time they met. Would try and see less bone, less long sleeves and shame. He could sometimes even fool himself into thinking that what he was doing now made up, at least a little, for what he had done before.

It was easier to fool himself into thinking that way than it should have been. But Natsume was endlessly kind and forgiving and already looked at him with mischief in his smile and laughter in his eyes, having put the past behind him. Katsumi wanted to apologize for who he had been, but he didn’t know how and didn’t know if it was fair to Natsume to drag it all back up again.

So, he let it seep through his actions instead: he made no secret of how readily he trusted Natsume’s words now, would reach out to him, would pull him into the pace of normal teenage life, and would spend all the time he had with him pushing food into his hands, no matter how much he felt like a preschooler offering a lollipop to someone they had accidentally tripped in the playground.

(Except it wasn’t accidental at all, not in Katsumi’s case.)

Maybe it was childish to apologize with food, but Natsume would close his warm hands around whatever he gave him, and the knot in Katsumi’s stomach would ease a little with each increasingly sincere laugh.

He couldn’t help but look forward to the day he would deserve the smiles Natsume sent him.


	6. On guilt and masks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Natori chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been sitting in my laptop for a month and I've finally given up on it and decided to post it because I quite sincerely do not think I can figure out Natori. I use parentheticals in my writing as a way for characters to express side or conflicting thoughts, and this is the chapter that has the most parentheticals in it, which says a lot about this chapter, namely in that it was an absolute disaster. I don’t mean that my writing was terrible (I mean it wasn’t really up to snuff, but I wouldn’t go as far as terrible). I mean that Natori himself is a disaster. Seriously. I’m still totally unsure as to whether I veer more towards Natsume’s trust in him or Madara’s suspicion. In my opinion, he’s the least put together (and most complicated) person in the story. He just does a remarkably good job of pretending he actually knows what he’s doing. 
> 
> (He’s even fooled himself.)

When Shuuichi first met Natsume and realized the depth of his power and untapped potential, the only thought in his mind was how he was going to use him. And then Natsume nearly got himself blown up, jumping into his circle to save a Yokai he had only met once and Shuuichi thought, ‘okay yeah, this kid might be a little harder to use than I thought’. Despite acknowledging that he and Natsume were two entirely different people, Shuuichi hadn’t given up the idea of using him until their next meeting, when he invited him out to a hot spring with him, telling him it was for nothing but his company, lying through his teeth with practiced ease.

Natsume believed him entirely, only the pig-cat eyeing him suspiciously.

(Shuuichi thought the cat had much better senses than its master.)

Shuuichi found himself surprisingly enjoying the trip, originally not intending for this to be anything but business, even as he kept trying to convince Natsume that Yokai were the embodiment of evil and that he would be far better off as an exorcist. Natsume, for all his fragile looks, was the most stubborn person he’d ever met in his life, not bending a centimeter in his belief that not all Yokai were bad. He, foolishly, even believed they had the capacity to be good.

Shuuichi had researched the kid a little, not enough to sort through the mess that was his life, but more than enough to guess at the kind of life he lived and that Yokai were the root of all his troubles. How could Natsume bring himself to feel anything but hate towards these creatures?

(How could they be so similar but so different in the end?)

(He felt a little pang at that but brushed it away before he could register what it was.)

(He could use this trip to teach him what Yokai were really like.)

And then, in the middle of the night, Natsume awoke, tears falling without even realizing it, the weight of his life catching up to him in his dreams.

(When Shuuichi felt the pang this time, he recognized it as guilt.)

(He brushed it away anyway.)

And then there was nearly a disaster as the Yokai repaid Natsume’s kindness with savagery and wreaked havoc and Shuuichi wasn’t powerful enough and Natsume wasn’t experienced enough, and Shuuichi doesn’t panic, but he panicked a little because he hadn’t wanted to get the poor kid killed.

(A part of him couldn’t help but think that if the boy lived, he would finally learn to not place his trust in Yokai.)

But in the end, they were saved by a Yokai that repaid Natsume’s kindness with some of its own and Shuuichi was the one who didn’t know how to feel. And then Natsume turned to him and Shuuichi could see that he knew, that this ‘trip’ was just an excuse to get him out here, was just a way to use him, and he prepared himself for an anger that didn’t come. What he got instead was understanding, exasperation, a little sadness, and, surprisingly enough, disappointment.

The guilt swelled anew, staggering in its power, overwhelming him with emotion for what felt like the first time in too many years. Shuuichi hadn’t been on the receiving end of disappointment in so long he had forgotten what it felt like.

(After all, people couldn’t be disappointed in you if they didn’t care about you.)

(He and Natsume might be more alike than he thought.)

The next time he saw him, he was met with the same flat look he got any time he flashed the smile that melted everyone outside the exorcist community, and even as he messed with Natsume’s head, trying to get him to bend, he couldn’t help but wonder why his smile didn’t work on Natsume, hadn’t even from the moment they met. Was the boy just remarkably perceptive?

Shuuichi didn’t think this answer was _wrong_ per say but didn’t think it was entirely correct either. Then he caught Natsume smiling at the waitress and realized he could see through it because he had the same one, as worn and practiced and unreliable as Shuuichi’s own for all it didn’t look it to the untrained eye.

(Shuuichi’s smile was born from hating humans as much as he hated Yokai, but Natsume’s was different.)

(Natsume was different.)

(How was it possible to find someone so like him but not be able to understand him at all?)

It was difficult, caring about someone like Natsume. Caring about someone at all.

Neither of them was well-versed in social interactions. Oh, Shuuichi knew how to please people and fake his way through any conversation, far better than Natsume, but like Natsume, he had nothing in the way of friends or real family growing up and didn’t really know how to interact with someone who would consider him important and he would consider important in turn. Even now, the only person Shuuichi felt like he could actually call a friend was Natsume.

(And wasn’t that embarrassing?)

But damn him, damn him, damn him, Shuuichi’s entire life had been turned up on his head and the longer he spent with Natsume, the less sure he was about everything he had believed in his entire life. Shuuichi kept telling Natsume that he would have to choose between Yokai and humans, but he himself was believing that a little less. Was he not, as an exorcist, also living in two worlds? Was he really picking a side? Were there even sides to pick?

(Were his shiki more than captured enemy soldiers forced to do his bidding?)

He’d spent his entire life arming himself to hurt those that had hurt him – power-infused paper and words laced with barbed wire and broken glass – but Natsume had spent his entire life repaying cruelty with kindness. Shuuichi wasn’t a fool; he could read the results of that in the paper trail of the kid’s life and in his every word and action, years of damage steadily piled up.

And yet…

Natsume’s kindness had earned him two loving parents (blood be damned); a set of friends who truly held him dear, foolishly running straight into danger for him just as Natsume did for everyone; an army of Ayakashi who weren’t his shiki but would come when he called all the same (even when he didn’t); and an extremely powerful ayakashi right by his side, daring others to try and come near Natsume with malintent and ripping apart all those who did. Of course, this wasn’t due to Natsume alone. A great deal of it was because of the people that had come into his life, and the luck that sent them his way. But nothing would have started without Natsume.

Natsume’s kindness had granted him the peace Shuuichi had never gotten himself, the life he had once wanted as a child.

But it wasn’t quite that simple either.

(Of course it couldn’t be, nothing involving Yokai ever was.)

(And Natsume was the most complicated of all.)

Shuuichi had born witness to the many masks Natsume wore: the mask he donned as he pretended to be a god and observed the ending of an ancient tradition and the beginning of a great journey; the mask Shuuichi handed him so he could pretend to be a Yokai in a house splattered with blood while Natsume’s foolish friend came to help even though he hardly had any spiritual power to his name; and then that mask again as he pretended to be one of his shiki and did what Shuuichi believed no one else could have done and obtained priceless papers from a dragon through compassion alone; the mask he wore for the friends that didn’t know he had the Sight, constantly making excuses and looking over his shoulder; the mask for the friends that did know he had the Sight, hiding even more because he understood the dangers far better than they did; the mask for the Fujiwaras that made them laugh and look at Natsume as though he were something precious; the mask for the Ayakashi that knew him, a little brave, a little sarcastic, a little short tempered, and equal parts powerful and kind; the mask he donned around exorcists, firm disapproval and the desperate need to not show any weaknesses; and the mask he donned for everyone else, perfectly placid smile and eyes that gently and firmly shut down anyone who tried to come too close.

Shuuichi only had two masks: one for the exorcist community and Yokai, powerful, unflappable, and dripping with bloodthirst and danger; and one mask for everyone else, much like Natsume’s public one but more dazzling and suave (and just as unflappable). He found his masks dropping a little around Natsume, but all the same he only had the two.

Somehow, he felt far faker than Natsume.

Perhaps that was because Natsume had a little bit of him in every mask he donned, whereas Shuuichi was no longer sure how much of him was in each and what those parts of him were, masks plastered on so tight they started to bleed through his skin and change him instead of the other way around.

The more Shuuichi learned about Natsume, the more he thought his initial impression was the correct one: they weren’t really similar at all. But those stark differences were starting to soften a little, Natsume’s words and actions pricking at him and forcing him to shift and think and wonder even when he had no desire to, even when all it did was bring him more trouble.

Natsume was dangerous.

(So was being an exorcist.)

(Shuuichi decided to stay a little while longer.)


	7. On fear and paint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Kitamoto chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of the first chapters I wrote in this series (second only to the Touko chapter) and I'm not sure why this took me so long to edit but it's finally readyyyyyyyyy. So yay.

Atsushi knew that Natsume saw _something_. His excuses could only hold up so many times and the very real fear and panic in his eyes and voice before he would force it down behind his perfect poker face made it obvious that whatever he saw was real, or at least real to him, and dangerous. Atsushi wasn’t a superstitious person by nature, so he wasn’t sure how much he believed that there really _was_ something out there. He wondered though, sometimes, when it seemed like nature would bend around Natsume, when he would look at something like it was beautiful and the air would laugh in return. The day the wind and curtains tangled around and lifted Natsume and left violently with the bell was seared into his memory. He couldn’t help but believe a little.

He also couldn’t help but wonder if, of the many things Natsume picked up from his childhood, a mental disorder was among them. Everyone knew that Natsume had been passed around like an unwanted stray, never staying in one place for too long.  The rumors about him had arrived long before he did, covered in bandages and hidden behind glass eyes and perfect smiles so well-crafted Atsushi didn’t realize they weren’t real until he saw a smile that was.

Satoru had once said that he wouldn’t be sane if he were Natsume, moving as much as he did. Natsume had just smiled and replied in a way that made it seem as though it were _his_ fault instead of all the families that saw a frightened child and shunned him for it.

Atsushi thought that Satoru was onto something there. Natsume flinched at unexpected contact, made a visible effort (visible now only because Atsushi had learned what it looked like) to stay still when he saw the contact coming, would occasionally look at people like he was trying to decide if it was okay to talk to them, would sometimes still shrink into himself and haunt lonely rooms and unseen corners, would smile and lie like he didn’t know another way to live, would look startled at kindness and basic human decency. The life he had lived up until now had born all that, so would it be any surprise if it had born a mental disorder too?

Either one of those options – actual things beyond the world as he knew it or hallucinations so vivid he couldn’t tell what was reality and what wasn’t – would help explain why a boy as kind and gentle as Natsume would be passed around as much as had been. People couldn’t understand him and were frightened by him and saw that something was wrong, different, with Natsume and got rid of him for it.

Atsushi had never been more disgusted with humanity than he had been at that realization.

Natsume could read faces better than most people could words on a page, but that didn’t mean he always understood what everything he read meant. It was obvious enough he picked up that skill as a tool for survival. It was born from unkindness and fear and pain, so Natsume saw but didn’t understand kindness and sympathy and love, not when it was directed towards him.

(Or perhaps he could read it and just couldn’t trust in it.)

(Or perhaps he just didn’t know how to respond to it, the thought of that being impossible just common sense to him now.)

Atsushi remembered the time Natsume revealed he couldn’t ride a bike, smile easy and unconcerned even as he essentially admitted that no one before had cared about him. He was completely unaffected like it wasn’t the loneliest thing Atsushi had ever heard.

Natsume would say things like that sometimes, like he just didn’t know what was normal and what wasn’t or how to interact with people.

But other times Natsume would close off entirely, unwilling to say a thing, aware that what he was seeing or hearing was abnormal. Sometimes it would start with a slight moment of distraction and then not saying anything at all. Other times it was him saying something and then retracting the statement at others’ confusion. And other times still, it was an abrupt stop, eyes scared, before his ready-made face slammed down and he made an excuse to whisk away.

The most jarring time was during the preparations for the school festival when a can of paint had been knocked over. The terror and panic on his face and in his body threw Atsushi back into the moment his father had collapsed, Atsushi’s breath frozen in his chest even as his heart kicked into overdrive. Atsushi wondered what Natsume saw that would make him look like that and then looked down at the red, red, red crawling across the floor and realized what Natsume must have thought it was.

Atsushi had felt a little sick himself.

At times like that, when Natsume wore fear like a worn sweater, Atsushi couldn’t help but think about his father. Atsushi understood the fear in Natsume only all too well, the thrum of _what if something happens_ and _what will I do if I lose this_ a constant litany in the back of his mind.

Atsushi doesn’t know what he would do if he were in Natsume’s shoes, constantly afraid and unsure of what was real and utterly lost in any interaction that wasn’t unkind. Atsushi didn’t know what he would do if he saw what Natsume saw or if he lost all that Natsume had lost.

He remembered reading somewhere that courage wasn’t the absence of fear, but rather the moving forward despite it. When Atsushi looked at Natsume, facing his unseen demons, those in front of him and those from his past and those from the nightmares of what could be, he couldn’t help but feel admiration.

For all that he looked fragile and insubstantial, Natsume was the bravest person he knew.

When Atsushi looked at Natsume, he felt like he could be a little braver too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing in a little ‘hey this might be a child who has a mental disorder and needs help’ was a little fun (that kind of sounds terrible given the context) because I think that’s a lot of what Natsume Yuujinchou is, seeing someone who’s so different from everyone else, from ‘normal’, and learning all the things that make them beautiful despite (because of) it. I think about it every time I read a chapter from his childhood or from the perspective of someone looking at Natsume. I get properly outraged like all Natsume fans do, but I can’t help but think ‘okay but what would I do?’ and then it gets so difficult. I’m not saying that anyone handled it correctly (except Ogata really), especially all the adults in his life who really should have known better, but it is a little interesting to think about. Because, quite frankly, I wouldn’t believe that someone was actually seeing Yokai, and what Natsume wanted (needed) the most was for people to believe that the things he saw were real, and considering they actually are…well. But, either way, I still wouldn’t see a child with what appears to be a mental disorder and then go “wow this kid is a nightmare and I need to get rid of him as soon as possible”, especially considering how sweet he was when he wasn’t experiencing what I would see as episodes.
> 
> But Japan in general isn’t super great about mental health and either way, it’s pretty obvious no one has gotten him help (not that anything would help since they’re not actually hallucinations, but it’s the thought, and he’s pretty depressed and anxious and could use someone to talk to anyway), plus a lot of Asian countries in general still have the ‘beat it out of him’ mentality. From the perspective of a social worker in the making, unless you’re pretty knowledgeable and patient and understanding and, you know, actually willing to take care of a child who’s been through hell, you wouldn’t know what to do or how to help, or in some cases, be able to control your temper around a kid like Natsume. It can be really taxing and really difficult and there’s going to be a lot more bad days than good ones honestly. I think Natsume Yuujinchou tackles this really well, the recovery process. But really, you got to feel bad for the kid. And happy that he’s found awesome people like Atsushi and company who are all patient and understanding and immeasurably kind.


	8. On helplessness and nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Tanuma chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been sitting in my laptop for quite a while. I had written another Tanuma and Natsume fic a while back and I was so caught up in Tanuma's thoughts that immediately after finishing that one, I was able to pound this one out too. It just took me a really, really long time to get around to editing this. But I finally did it, yay.

As Kaname learned more about Natsume, from the person himself and the rumors that followed and swallowed him like a fog, he wondered if there was a price to pay for being involved with Yokai beyond that of headaches and sickliness and a certain distance from their peers.

Kaname saw shadows and lost his mother.

Natsume saw a world so real he couldn’t distinguish the two. Natsume saw everything.

Natsume lost everything.

His parents, the ability to make friends, the warmth from people that should’ve been his family, love and trust both towards and from others, the ability to understand normalcy, and the surety most children had that people were, could be, _good_ to them.

(He didn’t lose his kindness.)

Kaname thought these things every now and then and hated himself for it because that couldn’t be true (and even if it was, what could he do about it?), but he also felt a little sickened, because if he thought this sort of thing even with the unwavering support of his father and kindly neighbors that would look after him when he was sick and his father was too busy, how must Natsume have felt? Alone and disregarded, probably even feared and hated, followed by things he didn’t understand and with no one who understood him. Did he stay up at night like Kaname had, wondering if everyone would be better off if he was dead? If he had never been born to begin with?

Did Natsume have someone that could shake off those nightmares for (with) him?

When Kaname met the Natsume that had been confused by the Days Eater, set back years and no memories from the time he had lost, the tangle in his chest grew even more. Natsume was so afraid of them, so unsure of Ponta, so sure he needed to escape.

Natsume wasn’t bothered at all by the prospect of not wearing shoes, of donning clothes far too big for him, of following perfect strangers and having no choice but to trust someone even when not being given much of a reason to.

He was moved by the prospect of normal life, of festivals and fishing and friends. Kaname hadn’t had a lot of that either growing up, but he had known that that was unusual and he wanted it. Natsume seemed like he didn’t even realize how unusual what he was saying was. He seemed like he had given up on wanting it long ago.

When Natsume said “monsters”, was he talking about Yokai or humans?

When young Natsume yelled at something Kaname couldn’t see, when he ran away frightened at the thought that Kaname had seen him do so, when he said that it would be too hard to believe in them because it was much more likely that this was just another trick from Yokai, when the first question he asked about the Fujiwaras was whether or not they hated him, Kaname wasn’t sure what the answer was.

To Natsume, maybe everything and everyone was a monster.

Even as small as he was, Natsume already had that look in his eyes, the one that spoke of pain and fear, eyes that would turn hard and impossible to read at a moment’s notice. It was bad enough on the Natsume he knew. It was heartbreaking on a child.

Then Natsume said that he thought he was about to remember everything again, but he was afraid of all the terrible memories that could come with it and Kaname wanted to ask, “what could be worse than this?”. The saddest part was that he believed Natsume, that there were far worse things to come as he grew older.

No matter how old Kaname got, no matter all the unbelievable experiences that were sure to come as a result of being by Natsume’s side, Kaname knew that he would never forget that day.

Kaname learned more from Natsume than anyone else.

He learned about pain and love, how to appreciate life, how to understand people. He learned what it was like to want to help someone. What it meant to struggle and fight and _live_.

Kaname had a new set of nightmares with Natsume as a friend, visions of him dying and hurting.

Somehow, they were still better than his old nightmares that were nothing but empty space and guilt and loneliness.

“’Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.”

Kaname hadn’t believed that when his mother disappeared, had hated the thought of it and whoever said it, but, as awful as it was, looking at Natsume and all the love he was experiencing for the first time, he was beginning to understand. It was still terrifying, terrifying, _terrifying_ even imagining the loss of any of those he had come to hold dear, but he no longer lived half in fear of making any connections at all. He had come to be glad for all the people he had come to know, for the mother whose loss had opened up a yawning pit inside of him.

Kaname didn’t know what he could do for Natsume in turn.

Natsume opened up a little more every day. Some days he would close up again, sometimes a little, sometimes entirely, but it was clear to anyone that looked that he was slowly but surely getting better, getting over whatever haunted his dreams and hollowed out his smile.

Kaname didn’t know if his being by Natsume’s side was doing anything for him.

But if Natsume felt anything like Kaname did, then Kaname knew he was helping chase away a few of the nightmares.

For now, that was enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tanuma and Natsume are interesting to compare and contrast. Personality-wise, Nishimura and Natsume are opposites. Lifestyle-wise, Natori and Natsume are total opposites even though the reasons why they are the way they are stem from the same things (any time you put them together, it’s like seeing what the other could have been). But Tanuma and Natsume…they’re as similar as they aren’t, and both really confused on how to handle that. So this was just a lot of Tanuma thinking about himself and thinking about Natsume and not knowing what to do but wanting to do something all the same.


	9. On selfishness and photos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Nishimura chapter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nishimura was fun to write, because in my head he’s not totally happy with himself. Quite a bit of that is creative license of course, since he doesn’t get a lot of exposure in the manga, but well, this is fanfic, it’s all about creative license. I don’t think Nishimura is unconfident per say, I just don’t think he’s all that confident either. He thinks he’s just an average person that does average things and has average worries and, like the average teenagers, has things about himself he doesn’t like. I think he’s awesome and sweet and lots of fun and good for Natsume, but it doesn’t really matter what I think, it’s about what he thinks about himself. And, well, I think the kindest people are often the ones that don’t think they’re kind at all – that the things they do are normal things that everyone does or should do, and they’re all the kinder for it.

Satoru was good with people. He was selfish and rowdy and loud and obsessed with girls. He was not very smart or very kind or very good at pleasing his mother. He wasn’t a lot of things, and a lot of the things he was weren’t very good, but Satoru knew he was good with people. He like to laugh and smile and drag people into his pace and make them smile and laugh as a result. He loved that – making people laugh, even if it was at him. He was sure that he had at least that – his one talent was pleasing people.

And then Satoru met Natsume.

Natsume was…well, he wasn’t like anyone Satoru had ever known. At first, he seemed entirely uninteresting and uninterested in making friends. Satoru was good with people, but he wouldn’t push if someone clearly wouldn’t appreciate it (no matter what his brother and mother said). Natsume was sure with people in a different way from Satoru – he handled everyone gracefully and maturely, his smile and eyes easy and constant. He interacted with people the way Satoru had seen adults do. Adults that were content with themselves and their lives, or adults that were in a professional setting, assuring others of their competence.

(As Satoru came to know Natsume more, he knew that it was the latter rather than the former.)

(After all, being professional was often the same as being distant.)

Satoru was good with people, but he wasn’t good with Natsume. He was everything Satoru wasn’t and taller and more popular than him to boot. The popularity was an odd thing though; it wasn’t like he interacted with people that often, not in a way that led to people knowing anything about him, but, somehow, that added to his charm. He was the mysterious transfer student, thin fingers and elegance and a certain way of moving that made it seem like he was a part of the air instead of walking through it the way everyone else did. Of course, the biggest factor that led to his popularity was the fact that he was…well, he was beautiful.

(He’d never used beautiful to describe a man before, but nothing else fit.)

Natsume was oddly colored – silver and green – and it should have looked out of place on anyone, especially anyone Japanese, but somehow, he wore it well, like there wasn’t anything else he could be. It just… _worked_. But that was what Natsume was like – a walking study in peculiarity that managed to make as much sense as it didn’t.

Everything about him was strange and Satoru didn’t know what to do about it, so he started to not do anything about it all, right after the day Natsume practically ran from him after Satoru took him to his house after Natsume had collapsed. The next day, when Natsume apologized, and Satoru said it was fine, smiling in a way he rarely did, when he was mostly just being polite, Natsume seemed to pause for a moment, before slipping back into that plastic smile of his that, up until then, had been turning a little more real around him. He started distancing himself from Satoru the next day, like they had agreed to do it even though they hadn’t said anything at all. That moment, when Satoru had smiled without truly meaning it, somehow Natsume knew it wasn’t real and why it wasn’t. He realized that Natsume knew because others must have distanced themselves before for similar reasons. Natsume knew because his fake smile was so perfect, he could recognize anyone else’s a mile away. 

(Satoru felt a little selfish with how relieved he felt at that – that he could pull away without causing problems.)

But then Natsume became his friend anyway.

Satoru clearly remembered the day it happened because that day was the oddest day in his life thus far. He’d never raised his voice like that to any of friends before, all irritation and intention to hurt, and over _origami_ , of all stupid things. And then Natsume’s eyes had shifted somehow, like he wasn’t looking at Satoru, but through him, and that, more than anything, had snapped him out of it. He ran and ran, wondering what Natsume had seen instead of him, who he’d seen instead of him, if they were as ugly and twisted inside as Satoru felt in that moment. He doesn’t remember what happened, but he woke up in a hospital room without even being aware he had passed out. And then Natsume couldn’t be anything _but_ his friend, because what was a better bonding experience than a hospital trip born from something so strange it felt more like a dream than reality?

Somewhere along the line, Natsume became one of his favorite people, just like Atsushi was. But he’d known Atsushi his entire life and Natsume for only a year and he was oddness wrapped in secrets, but he fit all the same. Like a piece he hadn’t realized was missing until it slotted into place.

It would make him a little sad and a little angry when Natsume admitted that he’d never had things, had never done things, that Satoru had taken for granted. Things like fishing and catching bugs and riding bikes and just having friends. He couldn’t do anything about Natsume not having the chance to do that as a kid, but he could do those things with him now. He _liked_ doing things with Natsume that were new to him, seeing a sort of gleeful childishness that was far cry from the mature and cold person he had once thought Natsume was.

His selfishness became stronger the more time he spent with Natsume. Satoru had ended up liking him so much that he wanted to know him and keep him. He couldn’t help the desire to learn more about Natsume and the things in his past even as he knew that Natsume would prefer to leave all of it behind him. And when he saw how close Tanuma and Taki were to him, how they seemed to hold some of Natsume’s secrets and speak about them with nothing but their eyes, he couldn’t help but feel jealous.

(It wasn’t because of how close Natsume was to Taki.)

(Well, it wasn’t _just_ because of that.)

Satoru hadn’t felt so strongly about someone before, not in the way he did about Natsume, secondhand hurt and anger and wanting nothing more to protect him and make him smile. It was hard though, to help someone who didn’t think he deserved help, who didn’t even realize he needed it.

He thought he learned the most about Natsume in a brief moment on a sunny afternoon, when Natsume had lost a picture of his parents, _the only one he had_ , and tried to act as though it didn’t mean anything at all. Something about that made him angrier than he’d ever been.

(That happened a lot around Natsume, feeling things more than he’d ever had before.)

He wanted to shake Natsume and tell him that it was okay to feel hurt about things, that feeling that way wouldn’t inconvenience other people, that it was okay to ask for help, that he _should_ ask for help when he needed it because no one could live alone and do everything on their own. He wanted to throttle all the people in Natsume’s life that had made him think the way he did.

And then they found the picture and Natsume had smiled at it in a way that Satoru hadn’t yet seen from him. It was a little sad and a little lonely and a little happy and just a little of everything and the most real Natsume had been since Satoru had met him.

It was also the first time Natsume had seemed lonely. Oh, he acted in ways that spoke of habitual solitude and said lonely things all the time, but all those things were unconscious – he did those things like he didn’t know it was a lonely thing to do.

(And that too, made him seem terribly lonely, but in a different way entirely.)

But looking at that photo, his smile different from both his fake one and the one Satoru had gotten used to seeing now, he really _looked_ lonely. As though, this time, he knew what he was missing; he didn’t understand what it was he was missing, but he missed it all the same.

Missing something you never knew was an odd concept to Satoru. The things he missed the most were the things he once had, namely the closeness of his family. But Natsume seemed to only miss things he’d never had.

In moments like that, Satoru felt terribly selfish. Here was Natsume, so kind and at ease even with all he’d been through, and here was Satoru complaining about the tense air that had enveloped his house with the advent of his brother’s exams, about the irritability of his mother and brother, about the increasing distance from his father. When he compared his life to Natsume’s, he wondered if he had any right to complaining at all.

But he didn’t think that was fair to himself. After all, pain was something people felt and dealt with themselves. To pick up and examine different people’s pains and set them on a scale was pointless at best. In that sense, it didn’t matter that worse things happened to people in the world, that worse things happened to people he knew (to Natsume), this was the worst thing to happen to him, and because of that, it was the thing that hurt the most. Telling himself he didn’t have a right to feel that way was no better than not doing a thing about it at all. And pain was odd that way anyway: often times, no matter who it was, it was the smallest things that were the most painful.

Thinking like that also wasn’t fair to Natsume. To act as though he alone had suffered, he alone had been hurt. There was nothing more isolating than everyone treating you as though you were completely different from them. And Satoru hadn’t lived through the things Natsume had, hadn’t experienced pain in the ways he had, couldn’t really understand the scope of what had happened and how it had affected Natsume, but he understood, at least a little, what it was like to be hurt, what it was like to ache, what it was like to feel selfish for wanting attention and love, what it was like to feel lonely among people, among family. He didn’t know how to say he understood (because he didn’t, not even a fraction of it, and there was no way to say he understood the parts he did without it sounding superficial), but he didn’t think he had to. Maybe Natsume already knew, maybe he didn’t, but none of that really mattered in the end. None of that had stopped Natsume from being his friend, from being dragged into Satoru’s pace and smiling and laughing alongside him.

Satoru was a lot of things and he used to think most of those things were bad, but if he wasn’t all those things, and if he were all the things he wasn’t, perhaps he wouldn’t have been able to become friends with Natsume. He liked Natsume _because_ of all the things he was and all the things he wasn’t (because that’s what being friends meant), so Natsume must like him for who he was as well.

Satoru had never felt happy about being selfish, but if it kept Natsume by his side, well, he could feel good about being the person he was after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The paragraphs about pain, and comparing it to others, were ridiculously hard to write, which is why I saved this chapter for second last. I didn’t know how to write it without sounding like I was belittling people who really have been through really terrible things, so lots of Nishimura’s hesitation there is my own. I do earnestly believe what I wrote there though. To compare pain is to deny yourself the validity of your own thoughts and to deny yourself the ability to move past it, to be a better person in moving past it.


	10. On hope and boxes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The very, very last chapter (what an odd feeling): the Natsume chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter kind of turned into something of an explanation of all the things people have noticed about Natsume in the previous chapters, the life he’s lived so far and what he took away from it. And, probably because of that, it also turned into a super depressing chapter. I’d apologize, but I also think this chapter turned out the best (and that Natsume’s perspective on the truly horrific things he’s lived through is important).
> 
> Well, basically, the talk of abuse and neglect is much more overt in this chapter, so just a warning for what you’ll be getting into. If that isn’t the kind of thing you can read (for whatever reason that may be), please don’t. Protect your emotions and mind from the internet.

Takashi could hardly remember a time he wasn’t living out of boxes, living in as little space as possible so it would take less time when he had to move again, so it would hurt less to tape up the lids.

(He could never make it not hurt at all.)

Takashi used to think he would be passed around until he graduated high school. He thought he would die as his parents and grandmother did before him, young and alone and with people only talking ill of him if they talked about him at all.

Takashi would sit up at night, wondering who would arrange his funeral, who would come, if _anyone_ would come.

And on nights when he was feeling a little more hopeful, he would wonder if he would also live like his parents and grandmother had, finding someone to love before the end.

And on nights when he was feeling something in between, he would wonder if his grandmother really had found someone to love or if she had been just like as all his relatives said she was.

Takashi hoped not, because all his relatives also said he was exactly like her.

(Did that mean she could see them too?)

(Did that mean she knew what they were?)

(Did that mean she would have been able to love him?)

But as Takashi grew older, age passing into double digits, he learned nothing more about his grandmother and only that the monsters that haunted him were called Yokai. He kept changing houses more and more often a year, the families getting less and less kind, no longer putting up the pretense that he was anything but a burden. Somewhere along the line Takashi had stopped thinking “this is my new family” and started thinking “this is the next family”.

He couldn’t think of any of them as his family. He couldn’t, not anymore.

(Nothing was more painful than hope.)

And as he grew, Takashi learned more and more about how to maneuver around the pitfalls of both humans and Yokai. Learned to read humans so he knew when to run or hide or stay quiet. Learned to tell apart the Yokai that wanted to kill him and the ones that wanted to trick him. Learned to approach everything and everyone with distrust first.

He learned to hate the Yokai as much as they seemed to hate him because they were the reason humans hated him.

(Sometimes Takashi also hated humans.)

(Most of the time he just wanted a human to like him.)

(They never did.)

On nights when he wouldn’t be able to think anything but those thoughts, and on rare nights when the Yokai left him alone, he would shuffle over to one of his unopened boxes and pull out a worn out book and open it to see a frayed, yellowing photo peeking out at him, recognizing the woman’s face and the man’s smile in what he saw in the mirror. He could shove away the hurt long enough to imagine what a life with them would have been like. In the picture, he was still resting inside his mother, his parents happy at the prospect of him coming into the world. He couldn’t really remember them, but he thought it was better that way, because he could pretend that they would have loved him, eyes and all.

(And on nights when he was feeling a little more hopeful, he could even believe they had.)

Takashi started to understand, a little, why both worlds rejected him.

To Yokai, Takashi was ephemeral, to humans, he was ethereal. He belonged in two worlds and because of that belonged in neither and it showed in every unsure step he made. But knowing this didn’t help him fit in either.

It did help him navigate them a bit better.

Takashi learned how to cut his hair, how to cook and clean, how to steal from those who housed him when they went too long without feeding him, how to recognize when that hunger had gone on for too long, how to hide bruises and hold still when more would be added, how to encase his heart in ice so the things his relatives and teachers and classmates said wouldn’t hurt him, how to fix the cracks in that frozen armor when it hurt anyway, how to reduce the amount of space he took up and attention turned on him, how to spend as little time as possible in houses he didn’t belong in, how to hate the smell of alcohol and tobacco but live with it soaking into his skin anyway, how to deal with the many families that weren’t unkind but simply didn’t know how to deal with him and tried until they wouldn’t want him anymore.

(He thinks those hurt the worst of all.)

He learned how to find the shrines at every place he moved to, how to run and fight, how to deal with the Yokai that wanted to eat him, how to deal with the far more difficult ones that wanted to trick him and seeped into his mind and heart, how to chase out the ones that would come to the houses he stayed at, how to shut out the ones that would invade his dreams and whisper things that were all too tempting, how to suppress his flinches and screams, how to tell lies when he couldn’t suppress them, how to stay alive if only to not bring more trouble to the people who were willing to house him and to not disgrace the life his parents had smiled so happily in anticipation for.

(Wanting to stay alive was the hardest part.)

And then, one day, he met a woman and Takashi’s life turned on his head. She was kind and gentle and smiled at him like she was happy to see him and asked him what no one ever had before – if he wanted to come home with her. No one had ever given him the choice and with that one question he felt more wanted than he had in his entire life. At first, he thought that she was a Yokai. He knew they could read his nightmares and the most painful ones were the dreams where he was loved and then had to wake up. A Yokai turning his dream into reality just to see the look on his face was far more likely than a human looking at him with eyes like that, after all. So he didn’t dare hope. But then he went back to the house full of strangers and found empty teacups and the mother (not his, never his) saying that someone had asked about him, and he couldn’t help the little curl of warmth in his chest.

(Maybe this mother would be his.)

And then he met a man. He came to the hospital with the woman and looked just as soft and kind and only put a steady hand at the end of the bed when Takashi started crying like he hadn’t done in front of people since he was a small child, back before he learned to choke down the tears so as to create less noise. The man was much quieter than the woman but would include him every chance he had, in trips out of the city, in conversations at the dinner table, in walks home from school when he got out of work early enough. Takashi wondered what he had done in his life to live with people as kind as these. He prayed for this life to never end, and with each day it didn’t, the warmth in his chest grew a little more.

(Was this what peace was?)

And then he met two boys. One was rambunctious and the other was calmer (probably from years of controlling the other when he needed a steady hand), but the both of them were normal teenage boys and dragged him into all the normal things they did, no matter how weird he was being or how much they didn’t understand him. They never looked at him with pity or fear or disgust and spent time with him because they actually _wanted_ to. And now, now the warmth was out of Takashi’s control and he had far too much to lose. He prayed to anyone who would listen, even (especially) if they were Yokai, to not take this from him because this was the first time he’d lived in a _home_ and he would fall apart if he had to leave it.

(If he were to be thrown away again.)

And then…

And then he met a cat.

He unpacked his boxes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’re being abused in any way or know someone that is, here are some good links for finding help and learning how to recover and helping other people recover:  
> Emotional abuse: https://www.crisistextline.org/emotional  
> Child abuse: http://www.childhelp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/CPS-Reporting-June-2018.pdf  
> Domestic abuse: https://www.thehotline.org/help/  
> Sexual abuse (and a good deal of links to things other than sexual abuse): https://www.rainn.org/national-resources-sexual-assault-survivors-and-their-loved-ones
> 
> Everyone and anyone can (should) be happy and healthy, and I hope if any of you have a Natsume in your life, you can try your best to be as kind and patient as the people in his life, (not at the expense of your own mental health of course), or at least direct them towards people and places that can help. 
> 
> Leave love in the form of kudos and comments if you have any love to give and thanks for sticking with this fic! 😊


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